Drained and inspected

As mentioned earlier, I was due for a proper medical diagnosis of my suspected cœliac disease. To my confused delight, six weeks of eating gluten again had rather improved the state of my stomach. Now, being enteroscoped introduced some other restrictions: starting a week before the examination date I had to go on a low-fibre diet and fast completely the last day, combined with a “gut flushing” powder. Well, a lot of flushing was involved… I was also forbidden to even drink anything for several hours before the examination. The reason for this was made clear as I found myself desperately retching with a gastroscopy tube down my throat—there was nothing to throw up no matter how much my reflexes wanted to. Thankfully the gastro-enterologist was skilled and had his biopsy done in a few minutes. The coloscopy was a rather longer procedure but nowhere as painful. Nothing obvious was visible to the naked eye, but in another month we shall have the lab results back and consider where to go from here.

Bad site, good sight

I booked tickets for an upcoming train excursion on the SJ web site. Through the perversity of capitalism or whatever, it turned out to be considerably cheaper to ride first class than second. This meant that breakfast was included on the way out. However, if you have “special needs”, e g being a vegetarian, you can’t just check a box for this, but have to call separately to order your special food. This I did today, and after having been shunted around a bit by different call centre persons (because of course the voice menus did not indicate which menu option would give you the menu options, as it were), I ended up with the right person, who, with some audible effort, managed to adjust the food orders in some, as it sounded to me, less than obvious user interface. Now, I thought that maybe I could also add dinner reservations for the journey home, which I had missed to do earlier. The CCP excused herself and disappeared for ten minutes or so, trying to work out how to add dinner reservations and eventually couldn’t come up with anything better than booking new seats for us, this time with dinner reservations. I didn’t think we’d eat so much that we’d need two seats each, so I thanked her for her efforts and left it at that.

Now, this conversation had been long enough and required sufficiently little of my attention that I’d managed to do other things in parallel: to begin with, look up on the SL site how to get to my ultrasound examination. They have the very useful checkbox “I don’t mind walking a bit if it gets me there faster.” and turning it on suggested I could get to my destination in a third of the time it would otherwise take me, just by taking a ten-minute walk through the woods behind my house to a bus stop by the big road. This was a nice enough little outing, though the little narrow and winding road through the woods turned out to be frequented by huge articulated lorries every few minutes. I’m not quite sure where they thought they were going.

In the time since the Google car had passed, somebody had carefully smashed all the glass walls of the bus shelter, but it was a sunny (though chilly) day, so it didn’t affect my immediate comfort too much.

Then I got to the care centre with a radiology department and got probed. I was fascinated to see that the bottles with conductive gel were kept in a little heater, so as not to be cold and nasty. Then I got to see the inside of my leg, and ye gods how thick the femoral artery is! Still, the ultrasound did not give sufficient resolution for a definite diagnosis, so next up: magnetic resonance tomography.

Stoic

I went to the local care centre to have a minor ailment looked at. As I had to repeat my little story at each level of triage, this particular snippet was also repeated at each stage:
“So it started about five, six weeks ago…”
“A week ago?”
“Five, six weeks ago.”
[Weird look]

Is the concept of “Wait and see if it gets better” all dead? Or maybe just the practitioners of it.

Anyway, the physician suspected it was a benign condition, but referred me to an ultrasound to make sure, so further updates as and when I get probed.

Update!

Now there is an update of the old Biochemical Pathways poster at SABiosciences. Not a complete view, alas, but chunks of pathways with diagrams, explanations, and references.

When bygones are bygones

Friday evening was spent at the Usual Place in the company of friends. Just as we got up to leave, my mother called.
“Hi, when are you coming over tomorrow?”
“…… Oh! The cherries! Right, er, uh, I’ll get in as early as possible.”
And so I did.

Mother’s cherry tree had excelled this summer and was full of plump red cherries. In a few hours we had picked perhaps 15 litres of cherries, and there were still plenty left in high branches. Being a mother, Mom admonished me sternly when I stood swaying on top of the ladder and reached for cherries, yet had no qualms at all about standing on the selfsame ladder, taking the saw to branches she decided were better off gone.

All picking done, I took some bags of cherries to take home and then we took some bags to my aunt. Chatting over cherries, coffee, cake, and Coke.
Then I got home for an evening of nothing special.

In the morning Mom called:
“Auntie said there were worms in the cherries, you should throw yours away.”
“Moom, I ain’t afraid of no worm. Anyway, I’ve put the cherries in the freezer, so any worms will be dead now.”

Honeybuns and I prepared for a day outing to somewhere, but just as we were ready to leave Auntie called. She’d just been on the phone with Mom again and Mom had had no recollection of any cherries, any visit, or anything. This surely couldn’t be good?
Uh-oh! I immediately called Mom and indeed she denied having talked to Auntie recently, did not recall having spoken to me either and certainly I hadn’t been there yesterday. Oh, no! 112 connects me to a nurse who listens to my explanation and suggests that it probably isn’t anything dangerous, but to go and check on Mom and call again if anything further happens.

In the taxi out I review the options and decide to take Mom straight into hospital anyway. As I arrive Mom is very upset, since I’m so clearly agitated.
“What’s happened? What have I done?”
I try to explain that she may have had a stroke and that I want her to see a physician. Further conversation makes clear that she has no memory of the last day or so, but neither is she aware of having lost any memories. She is much confused by my insistence that there is a problem, since she feels perfectly OK. When we get to A&E we are within minutes received by a neurologist and further testing bears out that this is the case: Mom is in good shape (for her age), knows perfectly well where we are, what day it is, who I am, and it’s so nice to see Honeybuns again. So, everything OK, except that Mom does not remember the events of the last day.
The neurologist explains that this probably is a case of transient global amnesia—causes are unclear, but it should clear up by itself with no aftereffects. Nevertheless, they’re going to run some additional tests and keep her for observation over the night.
After a CT Mom gets rolled up to a Neuro ward. More tests. She passes them all with flying colours. Some bits of memory seem to be returning, but Auntie’s phone call is still completely gone.

My brother and his girlfriend arrive. Sis is away, but is informed of events.

A decision is made and Mom gets rolled into the monitoring room. Four beds, all monitored from a central desk. Mom gets hooked up to a machine that goes bing. I’ve always found medical machinery comforting. Nothing shows that you’re taken care of as well as a machine that goes bing. Or breeep, as the case may be.

More tests are done in the course of the evening. Mom is perfectly clear and lucid. Eventually visiting hours are over and I have to leave.

In the morning, all us siblings call the ward in turns and get updates. More tests and then Mom is discharged. Probably nothing to worry about, but keep an eye open and do follow-up tests in a couple of weeks. Mom is much pleased to come home, but is still wondering about Auntie’s phone call that she just can’t remember.

Presumably I did the right thing taking Mom to hospital, even though it worried her and us others—it could have been something much more serious. Still, if Auntie hadn’t felt like making an extra phone call, possibly neither Mom nor anyone else would ever have noticed that anything was amiss, just another day in the life blurring into all other days and might not merit any specific mention.

Rude, sexist and sophomoric, what more could you ask for?

The British medical duo Amateur Transplants play and sing, mostly on key, the most hilarious lyrics to well-known tunes. If you don't want to shell out for their CD or DVD, many of their numbers are up on YouTube:
You're a pædophile
Lion King
Titanic
Drugs

(There's more…)

H/t Of Two Minds

Useful knowledge alert!

Revere blogs about a couple of recent articles that suggest new procedures for cardio-pulmonary resuscitation: if a person has collapsed with circulation failure (because they have had a heart attack, been electrocuted or drowned) it seems more important for survival to keep up circulation than inflating the lungs. So, if you are alone, don't bother with mouth-to-mouth, just keep compressing that chest.
If you don't know how to perform chest compression, get in contact with your nearest Red Cross centre, they regularly give courses in first aid. (CPR is visible and dramatic, but I think the most important thing taught in these courses is the habit to go up to people lying on the ground and check on them instead of just stepping over them.)

The pride of my children

Last Sunday I was completely knocked out—nauseous and dizzy. As I had been airbrushing an unusually big model the day before I was worried that I suffered from solvent poisoning. (Yeah, I still use Humbrol enamels, I know how they work and I have a couple of hundred tins.)

As the dizziness subsided, but did not completely disappear, I went to see a physician for a second opinion. He explained that I had a textbook example of Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo which would sort itself out with time. So what causes BPPV? Aging. Thanks a lot!

I told the children of this diagnosis and the Only-begotten Daughter was very disappointed as she had already told all her friends that I had almost died from thinner sniffing. Ah well, gotta keep my reputation up, I guess…

Poker face? I don't even have a poker mouth

Kal notes that he has a poker face in front of patients, which threw my memory back to when I was in high school, training to become a medical engineer. Part of this was a two-week internship at the Department of Medical Physics at Huddinge Hospital.

One day I and my partner got to make a study visit to see the gamma camera unit and follow an examination. The patient was an elderly gentleman with prior history of cancer who was there for a follow-up. The technician showed us how the camera was operated, the pictures were taken and then we went a bit further down the corridor for developing (long before digital equipment, this was). Slowly the big image came out of the machine and the technician put it on the light table for a check. As soon as I see the ghostly silhouette, peppered all over with dense black spots, I blurt out:
“All those are metastases!?”
“HUSH!” hiss both my partner and the technician. The former gives me a “You idiot!” glare and the latter glances furtively towards the patient, who is obliviously standing further down the corridor. Luckily it seems he hasn't heard me, or he has a better poker face than I.

The technician shoves the pictures into an envelope and seals it with half a dozen staples and then immediately sends the patient down for X-rays. To us he says:
“It's his doctor's job to explain”, and then mumbles “They get really good results with chemotherapy these days…”